AbstractUsing AMSR-E soil moisture, MODIS land surface temperature (T-s) and vegetation index product, the authors discuss the relationship between the variation rate of land surface temperature and surface soil moisture. Selecting the plains region of central United States as the study area, the authors propose the distribution triangle of the variation rate of land surface temperature and soil moisture. In the present paper, temperature variation and vegetation index (TVVI), a new index containing the information of temperature variation and vegetation, is introduced. The authors prove that TVVI and soil moisture show a steady relationship of exponential function; and build a quantitative model of soil moisture(SM) and instantaneous surface temperature variation (V-Ts). The authors later achieve downscaling of AMSR-E soil moisture data, through the above stated functional relationships and high-resolution MODIS data. Comparison with measured data on ground surface indicates that this method of downscaling is of high precision.